Sophiensæle

A ventriloquist’s show of a different kind: In a dialogue with a chronically ill clap-mouthed puppet, Hendrik Quast explores the stubbornness of intestines. A relationship drama with scatalogical humor, parody therapy and ventriloquism unfolds between the ventriloquist and the sick doll. With tools of the performing arts, the events of chronic illnesses that often remain invisible are staged; opening up new humor spaces in which illness is no longer a taboo.

Milliarden Jahre Widerhall was created after Naoko Tanaka’s travels to the contaminated area of Fukushima – a place where people’s connection to their habitat is forever destroyed. In a performative installation, Tanaka negotiates the ambivalent and conflicted relationship between humans and the earth, inviting us on a journey into inner landscapes.

Montag Modus: archive of futures presents a performance-installation set at the liminal space between film, dance and theater. Inspired by an encounter with three elderly dancers who were part of modern dance in Hungary in the 1930s, Figuring Age is a choreography of memories that explores how resilience, silences and traumas are inscribed in the body and in the movement.

The choreographic concert We are going to Mars is dedicated to the history of the first African space program in Zambia. Created from video works by local artists in Uganda and the USA, it is being performed with live music by Mourning [A] BLKstar. 

The film version of The Making of Pinocchio is also available online as video on demand - for those who can't or don't want to come to the theater. The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. Artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political. >> GO TO THE VIDEO VERSION

The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. In a technically innovative live film shoot, artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political.

The concert-performance accompanies the release of Astrit Ismaili’s first solo pop music album, produced by The Performance Agency in collaboration with Obsequeen, Lotic, Katu, Colin Self, Nömak, Europa and Mykki Blanco. The lyrics tell the story of a plant undertaking a physical and spiritual transformation to become the world’s First Flower. The project queers contemporary pop aesthetics and manifests how creativity can be a strategy to overcome existential limitations, echoing the artist’s own path.

Sorour Darabi’s work engages with potentials of re-appropriation to uncover what is hidden by binary thinking. In a kind of futuristic mythology with roots in both visible and invisible, preserved and lost dance traditions, Natural Drama questions the concept of “nature”, exploring representations and constructions of the so-called female body.

Philosophiermaschine Online is an artificial intelligence that brings dead thinkers back to life. At the click of a button, the online audience enters into dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Bloch and others, and can renegotiate their themes for the present: Freedom, dissidence, otherness, censorship, social utopia, hope - central concepts of postwar European philosophy.

Every successful blockbuster needs a second part. For the Markus&Markus theater collective, that’s why TITANIC II has to take the stage. The sequel starts where the film left off: at the bottom of the sea. So, it needs sand, really a lot of sand. Every year, mankind consumes twice as much sand as all the rivers supply. The consequences of this overexploitation are tangible. TITANIC II is a collision course, a melodrama, a telegram from a sinking ship.

Inspired by the made-up creatures and mythological figures of Acâibü’l-mahlûkat, Göksu Kunak explores notions of camouflage and self-censorship. This Persian cosmology book from the 13th century was translated to Ottoman and later in Turkish with a foreword of the current President. From a speculative perspective on the Middle East, Kunak examines (in)visibility and (in)concealment and the concept of taqiyya from Islam as hypercamoufl age.